There are thousands of Italian restaurants across America, ranging from humble pizza and pasta spots to stately dining rooms imbued with chandeliers and marble floors. Yet no matter how value-oriented or how expensive these places are, most seem to follow a simple pattern of offering numerous classic Italian dishes, from lasagna to veal marsala.

Enter Osteria Langhe, a charming 60-seat dining room that opened in May 2014 in the Logan Square neighborhood on the north side of Chicago. This restaurant is dedicated not to the cuisine of Italy, but rather to one region, Piedmont, for both its food as well as its extensive and carefully organized wine list. It’s the dream partnership of Aldo Zaninotto and chef Cameron Grant, and it is not only one of the most unique Italian restaurants in America, it’s also one of the most creative and constantly surprising. And yes, it’s also one of the best.

A bit of background on the two principals. Zaninotto, a native of Belgium, came to the United States in 1989 and worked in restaurants in several cities, including New York and Chicago. He then turned his attention to Italian wine, representing several artisanal producers – including a few from Piedmont – across the country.

Grant, a native of Scotland, after working in various Italian restaurants both in America and Italy, opened Profumo di Vino, an osteria in the town of Treiso in the Piedmont region in 2009. After a few years, he moved back to America, becoming executive chef at a hotel in the Chicago suburbs. It was at this hotel, one fortuitous evening, that Zaninotto experienced Grant’s stellar cooking, and soon after Zaninotto and Grant agreed to open their own restaurant, based on their mutual love and experience of the wine and food of Piedmont.

At Osteria Langhe, Zaninotto and Grant apply the basic, but too often forgotten concept of dining in Italy: There is no Italian cuisine, there is only local cuisine. “Italy needs to be region by region,” Zaninotto states. “When you go to Italy and go to a specific region, you learn about that region.” He adds that experience is a must if this idea is to succeed. “I don’t think you can do a concept like Piemonte unless you have great knowledge of the wines, and unless you have a partner in the kitchen who lived life over there. It’s not about learning the customs, but living the moment there, season by season.”

Grant concurs, remarking “Piedmont changed my life.” When responding to the necessary question about the ingredients he uses at Osteria Langhe, compared to the produce and meats he purchased in Piedmont, he has strong opinions:

Being Italian means using the best ingredients you have available to you. When I lived in Colorado, I talked to a guy who sold me buffalo. Buying buffalo in Colorado was very Italian to me because I was buying things from the region.

So here, we’re buying rabbit from Iowa, which is nearby. We’re using ingredients that are the best things we have to grab. For me, literally, that is the heart of what we do.

For Grant, this is the message he wants to get across. “Opening this restaurant was crazy, it really was. We took a step and focused on a region. It’s the future of Italian food, focusing on a region and choosing what you want to do with it.”

For the wine list, Zaninotto has assembled an excellent selection of many types of Piedmont wines, from the famous, such as Barolo and Barbaresco (produced in the region's Langhe district, hence the restaurant's name) to the little seen, such as Lessona, a stylish red from Alto Piemonte (northern Piedmont) and Timorasso, a cult dry white. He even has six different offerings of Dolcetto on his list; given that this wine is too often ignored by many other Italian restaurants, this is an impressive statement.

The diversity of the list – there are seven bubblies from the region, including a sparkling Barbera – is notable, but even more remarkable is the pricing. Most Barbera on the list are priced less than $50 a bottle, while there are currently seven different Barolo priced under $100. “One thing that scares some people away is that the costs are expensive,” says Zaninotto. “For me, as a small independent guy, I cannot sit on inventory, so I’d rather make less and then get money back so I can reinvest.”

His policy of reasonable pricing on wines – as well as with food – has much to do with the neighborhood aspect of the restaurant, according to Zaninotto. This in turn, has a special benefit. “The idea that we created here at Osteria Langhe was friendship, knowing all our neighbors, so that people could come and feel comfortable to sit at the bar and have a cocktail for $10 or have a glass of wine for $12 or $15. They can have a glass of Favorita tonight and then a glass of Barolo tomorrow, and create a discussion. Just like when you go to Italy, and this is exactly what we have done.”

Wine recommendations

I asked Zaninotto to pair three of the classic Piedmont dishes that Grant prepares at Osteria Langhe. Here are his responses.

This dish is not always an easy one to pair if you want that perfect match, as the elements in the dish make it a bit challenging. I would look for something that would be able to find balance with this dish, so I would choose a wine such as Riesling that has a bit more weight and minerality with a hint of fruit on the finish. That said, my choices are:

Here is a complex dish with a great focus on the cheese (La Tur) bursting in flavor as well as a delicate edge with a final note of thyme. With that said, I am looking at something that will not interfere much with the flavor but would just help, so my choices are:

Degli Ulivi “Semplicemente” Bianco (Cortese) 2014 This wine is what we call natural wine (orange for some). The fact that the wine has that herbal character on the edge with minerality makes this one perhaps the best match. This wine has always been recommended by our staff.

Antoniotti Odilio , Bramaterra (Nebbiolo/Croatina/Vespolina) 2014 What I like about this pairing is the fact that again, this wine will be powerful in an elegant way and since Nebbiolo is part of it, the Croatina and Vespolina soften and balance the wine to tag along with the La Tur cheese and the texture of the agnolotti.

A dish for us that offers complexity in flavors and integrates with the prosciutto-wrapped rabbit loin, so for this dish, I can go different ways, something with more fruit (Dolcetto) or a more fruit-forward and elegant Nebbiolo. My picks are:

Pelissero “Mumfrina” Dolcetto d’Alba 2014. This wine is a classic, complex Dolcetto, in which the Dolcetto flavors emerge with their fruit character and bring a nice finish that truly elevates the complexity in the flavors of this dish.

Produttori del Barbaresco 2014: This is a vintage of elegance, with the accessibility of what I am looking for. A Barolo from Barolo township or La Morra could have been my second choice. However, the Produttori is the one that works for me with this dish, as it is not intrusive but just wraps up all the flavor and yet can stand up to the richness of the sauce and texture of the white meat character of the rabbit.

I am a Chicago-based wine writer, educator and photographer, with 37 years of experience in the wine industry. For the past 20 years, I have been a freelancer, writing professionally about wines from around the world, based on visits to wine regions from Napa Valley to Cham...